Page 344 - Untitled-1

PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT 323

8. He has also developed a loyal group of disciples, who extol the virtues of critical
chain, shoot down any of its critics, and champion the cause of this “new” sched-
uling elixir.

Putting any pride of ownership aside, the concepts of critical chain deserve our
attention. It makes absolute sense to move the inferred (but undefined) contin-
gency out of individual tasks and to group calculated contingency in a shared
buffer. This has always been an option in traditional critical path programs (with-
out the buffer analysis), and does not require the abandoning of such programs
just to adopt the shared contingency protocol.

If you were to adopt the full critical chain philosophy and support programs,
you would also have to adopt the full set of rules and processes associated with
critical chain, and abandon many of the important features of traditional CPM,
such as earned value and milestones. So be sure that you want to do this before
changing over to the “new” scheduling system. But either way, shared contin-
gency is available to you—under the old badge of CPM or the new badge of
Critical Chain.

Tip Avoid the building of excess margin in your time esti-
mates by sharing the time contingency among several tasks
within a task group. Shared Contingency is discussed in Chap-
ter 3.2.

Project Portfolio Management

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Is Enterprise Project Manage-
ment better than Project Management? In essence it is usually the same. It just
recognizes that the management of projects usually involves more than one. What
about Engagement Management? It’s just another label for Project Management.
It is primarily used by consulting or service organizations that “engage” in projects.

One of the hot topics in the management of the enterprise is Project Portfolio
Management (PPM). In Project Portfolio Management, it is assumed that the en-
terprise, via the selection and execution of projects, positions itself for increased
strength and profitability as well as assuring that the firm continues to thrive in a
world of constant change and the threat of competition.

The basic elements of Project Portfolio Management are not new. Nor is the
environment in which it is applied. However, before the emergence of Project
Portfolio Management, as a defined discipline, these elements were the responsi-
bility of two distinct groups: Operations Management and Projects Management.